Amid coronavirus fears, Microsoft waives fee for remote working platform

Global tech giant Microsoft is wooing subscribers to its remote working platform, Office 365 suite (Teams), by waiving the Sh8,200 annual access fee as fears over coronavirus rise.

Microsoft 365 corporate vice president Jared Spataro said the waiver will enable people to continue working while enhancing public safety and health as the novel coronavirus disrupt operations across the globe.

“If you are not licensed for Teams, you will be logged into the product and automatically receive a free license of Teams that is valid through January 2021. This includes video meetings for up to 250 participants and live events for up to 10,000, recording and screen sharing, along with chat and collaboration,” said VP Spataro.

Teams (Part of Office 365) is a chat-based collaboration tool that provides global, remote and dispersed teams with the ability to work together and share information via a common secured space.

Subscribers can share documents, engage in one-on-one conversations and team chats.

“Our top concern is the wellbeing of our employees and supporting our customers in dealing with business impact during these challenging times. By making Teams available to as many people as possible, we hope that we can support public health and safety by making remote work even easier,” he said.

The free Teams version will give users unlimited chat, built-in group and one-on-one audio or video calling, 10 GB of team file storage and 2 GB of personal file storage per user.

Users will also get real-time collaboration with the Office apps for web, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.